If you asked the average fan of rock and roll who the two most important pioneers in electric guitar design were, he'd probably tell you Leo Fender and Les Paul. And while those two men certainly deserve their legendary status, there's a third name that should be added to the list: Ted McCarty.
Ted McCarty (1909-2001) was a man who shunned the spotlight, letting his company's craftsmanship do the talking instead. McCarty was the CEO of Gibson, Inc. during its golden era, from 1948 to 1966, when McCarty left the company. 
As an executive McCarty was very much a hands-on engineer. However, unlike Leo and Les, he largely shied away from the limelight, which has resulted in his lower historical profile.
A new book published by Hal Leonard spotlights the great Gibson guitars of the 1950s, and aims to restore McCarty's name and reputation. Gibson Guitars: Ted McCarty's Golden Era 1948-1966 by author/collector Gil Hembree (with a foreword by pickup designer Seymour Duncan) sets out to change that, and through interviews Hembree conducted with former Gibson employees of the era, fellow collectors, and with McCarty himself before his death at age 91 in 2001, does a remarkable job.
Designing The Les Paul
Most musical historians who researched the origins of Gibson's first solidbody electric guitar have come to the conclusion that the bulk of the design work on the instrument was done by McCarty and his engineers before presenting the instrument to Les for an endorsement deal. (Note that Les Paul himself tells a slightly different version of this tale. In either case, such an instrument wouldn't exist without Les's own pioneering efforts in solidbody guitar designs in the mid-1930s.)
In Gibson Guitars, Hembree tells an amusing story of McCarty acquiring one of the first mass-produced Fender Telecaster solidbody electric guitars in 1951. After analyzing the instrument, McCarty said that he and his engineers thought that Fender's choice of a bolt-on neck was "infamy, as far as we were concerned" (and ironically, the core original members of the Les Paul Internet Forum frequently use similar language over half a century later). Nonetheless, McCarty recognized a musical revolution when he heard and saw one, and immediately decided "We weren't going to let him" — Leo Fender — "have the entire market".
McCarty then asked his engineers to design a competing instrument that would be the first solidbody electric guitar from Gibson. It would take the basic concepts of the Telecaster — two electric pickups, a thin solid body to cut down on feedback, with one cutaway for access to the higher frets on the neck, but with its binding, glued-in set neck, and especially its violin-like carved top, added to it the craftsmanship and refinement that Gibson was known for.
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